“This has to be made known,” said the traditional cook as she shared dishes, ingredients and experiences that are born in the countryside and served with identity.
In the Guanajuato ¡Sí Sabe! Pavilion at the León State Fair, there is a voice that cooks with memory and purpose. Sara Arvizu Rico, entrepreneur and traditional cook from San José Iturbide, came to this space to promote the ancestral legacy of her municipality and to invite families to taste a cuisine that preserves ingredients, techniques and rituals from the northeast of the state.
“I am very excited and I am also very happy to be a witness of this joint effort that the Ministry of Tourism is making,” said Sara as she opened her participation in this fair, which was promoted by the Governor of the People, Libia Dennise García Muñoz Ledo.
From her territory, her tourist vocation, Sara shows what they used to eat, how it was prepared and why this cuisine sustains the identity of her community.
“I was selling cookies in downtown San José and I said, ‘Well, what is the traditional cuisine here?’ And with that question... it changed my professional performance,” she said.
That curiosity led her to ask, listen and recover recipes. “That question was what gave me the curiosity to learn what our food used to be and I started asking my grandparents, my parents, my family,” she said. Then came the decision: “I said: ‘This has to be made known’”.
Sara names her proposal as traditional mestizo cuisine, a project that took shape with institutional support. “This enterprise arose with a training provided by the Secretariat of Tourism,” she explained.
From there he designed an experience that opens his kitchen to visitors: “Raíces mestizas” (Mestizo Roots). “I receive groups, I invite them to use the metate, the hand mill, to light the stove themselves, to know the sound of the stove,” she said. For her, that sound also teaches: “It tells them if it takes up air”.
At the Guanajuato ¡Sí Sabe! Pavilion, she will present a sample of her gastronomic heritage with nopales revolcados con chilcuache, local drinks and infusions and traditional pastries. “I am bringing a dish that is very much my insignia... which is nopales revolcados con chilcuache,” he explained.
He detailed the process with the pride of someone who learned it at home and decided to share it: roasted, chopped, ground and mixed in a molcajete with chili and garlic, “That's why we call it nopales revolcados,” he said.
The ingredient that arouses most questions among visitors is the chilcuache, a root that gives character to the cuisine of the municipality. “That for us is our main ingredient... it is a root that grows underground,” he explained.
“It usually takes 3 years for us to get that root.” She also talked about its use and what it represents for her community: “It is said that it has many medicinal properties... and in the kitchen we use it a lot for seasoning”. She mentions it in seasonal recipes, such as Easter bean soup and stews that are passed down in the family.
Identity, in her kitchen, is also drunk. Sara brought grass tea or sacate limón, an infusion that is part of the mornings in her community. “We use to boil it in water and drink it as a morning tea,” she shared.
His story returns again and again to the origin, the countryside. “I grew up with a family in San José Iturbide, my grandparents... they accustomed us to eat a lot of what the countryside gave us,” he said. He spoke of criollo rainfed corn and local ingredients as a fortune that is still preserved in his home.
Governor Libia Dennise also recognized the value of this memory and the meaning of this pavilion and highlighted the family dimension of the fair and its link to the history of León.
The León State Fair celebrates the 450th anniversary of the founding of the city and also the 150th anniversary of the fair, where the Guanajuato ¡Sí Sabe! Pavilion is a new space to recognize those who sustain the state's cuisine with daily work, ingredients from the countryside and recipes that are not written down: they are inherited.
Sara summed it up with a direct invitation: “I want to invite everyone to attend the Feria de León, to come to the Guanajuato ¡Sí Sabe! Pavilion and get to know our gastronomy and that of my colleagues. Then she added an idea that defines her path: ”We are a sample of Guanajuato's identity“.
The Ministry of Tourism and Identity of the Government of the People endorses the promotion of traditional cooks as guardians of the gastronomic heritage and as hosts of experiences that connect territory, community and history. In the voice of Sara Arvizu, San José Iturbide comes to León to tell who she is.
